Chapter 24

Handsome Jack

Maybe it was vain, but before it was vain, it was logical. He was a hero, and hero couldn't win the hearts of the people without a winning smile. Sure, it wasn't exactly sporting, but Jack didn't make the rules.

Well, he did now, but that wasn't the point.

In all truth, he hadn't been sold on the idea of a mask when gangly professor who stood just a little too close to Jack had assured him he could make him a new face. Then again, that was probably because the man's oily tone suggested he was partial to a Skin Pizza Party. Jack wasn't convinced the man was not going to come crawling back on one knee, presenting up to him a skinned visage from some poor Psycho.

Still, Professor Nakayama had really pulled through for him. The completed mask was devastatingly accurate, to the point that Jack made a mental note to change all his passwords, locks, and social media settings the moment they were done here. The man had crafted every angle of his face perfectly. Perhaps too perfectly, with every chiselled line slightly sharper, his nose straighter, his brow more defined. Sure, Jack knew damn well he was good-looking, but this guy clearly thought he was carved from fine marble.

Which would have been fine, if he didn't breathe through his mouth.

"Ah…thanks, Nako…Nakim…yeah whatever, good job," Jack said, finishing admiring himself in the mirror and turning to find the professor leaning in too close. He could swear the man sniffed him.

"O-of course. Do you like it, Jack? Is it comfortable? I have your face measurements; I was up all night making sure the mask was almost as perfect as you are!" the man dribbled out, and Jack backed away, holding both hands up. Everything about that sentence had been made infinitely more disturbing by the fact Professor Nakayama hadn't even measured Jack's face before making the mask. At least, not to Jack's knowledge.

"Yeeeeah, okay, you're weird!" Jack smiled. His face felt…fine. In fact, it was like normal. The mask didn't press against his skin as much as it seemed to meld with it, moving as he did. "You get to not be fired on the grounds of a good job, buuuut stay away from me forever. Thanks, buddy!"

Jack made the mistake of clapping Nakayama on the shoulder. The man gave a moan, his eyes rolled, and he crumple to the floor in a dead faint. Jack looked down at the fallen man for a moment, lips pursing. Then, he shrugged, and stepped on the man as he walked off.

He headed out of the professor's office, which was far too close to the medical bay for Jack's liking. God, nothing good ever happened there. He decided when he was president of Hyperion, he would be closing that wing down.

Of course, the doctor had gone running to Tassiter. Thanks to Jack's daughter controlling the Hyperion network, the memo hadn't gotten out that Jack had indeed been fired by Tassiter while on Elpis, so the news that Jack had killed the company psychiatrist hadn't really been grounds for dismissal.

"Good news, Jaaaawn! Yeeerr throoough," Jack mimicked Tassiter's voice as he stormed through the corridors of Helios. The security bots rolled by him in search of John Bryant Jnr, wanted for murder and the threat of murder towards Hyperion's CEO. They bumped into the walls as Jack walked by, blinded by Angel's hand. "And this time, the booooard is behind me. Psh! Yeah, right, dickwad…"

Sure, the board had been behind Tassiter. Like that meant anything. Even as Jack arrived at the Fast Travel Station, he could feel his ECHO-device buzzing away in his pocket as message after message stumbled in. He ignored them with a smirk growing over his face, and the Fast Travel whisked him away to the Control Core. Unlike his usual visits, this one wouldn't be alone. Standing at the door to the central room was lanky skeleton of a man whose hairline was higher than the average Hyperion employee's aspirations.

"Good ta see you, Jimmy! 'Grats on the promotion, huh? Huuuh?" Jack beamed, nudging the man with his elbow as he reached him. The older man clearly bit his tongue.

"Thank you, sir."

"Hey, just saying, this is a big deal. I don't let just anyone in here, Jimmy. Y'know, this is a display of trust!" Jack declared, tapping the console outside the Control Core's central room. "Honestly, if you utter a word to anyone, that security footage of your meeting with Mister Dimsdale goes viral."

"Of course, sir."

The doors slid open, allowing the two men to enter the circular room within. Striding into the middle of the room, Jack opened his arms as wide, his smile wider.

"Good job, Angel! Guess who's been unterminated! Almost!"

Jack pulled out his ECHO-device, choosing to ignore Angel's less-than-thrilled expression. The device was flooded with messages from shareholders and members of Hyperion's board. He flicked through a few idly as he walked towards Angel.

Oh my god, how did you know that? You can get my funds back, right? John, please, I'll give you anything!

I always knew Tassiter was a slimy piece of shit. Thank you for alerting me, John. Let's discuss your proposal as soon as possible.

So that's why he wanted you gone. To think he would go so far as to falsify claims against you. You have my apologies, John. Yes, if you can restore my funds, my shares are yours, John.

Jack hoyed the device over his shoulder, letting it spin out of his grip and clatter to the floor.

"Every sonovabitch dodging tax has their big ol' bank accounts on Eden-6. I can't believe Tassiter orchestrated a power-outage to steal money right outta their accounts, like, what was he thinking?" Jack chuckled, winking at Angel. "Good job Jack was noble enough to send a parting warning message to the board members, even though they'd all backed his termination. What a guy. What a hero."

"I…wiped the security footage in the Tourism Department too, sir," Angel reported, looking listlessly at Jack, though a flicker of curiosity danced over her pale face as she spotted Mister Blake standing next to him.

"Oh! Awesome, yeah, nearly forgot about that! Poor Mister Dimsdale…still, trying to take Jimmy's job wasn't cool. Wasn't sporting. Jimmy here is super-grateful, sweetheart," Jack elbowed Jimmy again, nearly knocking the willow of a man over.

"Very grateful, madam," Mister Blake said stiffly.

Jack glanced around then, twisting at the hip to see the digistructs lining the outer circle of the room.

"Yo, can I get a chair?"

Angel rolled her eyes, but with a wave of her hand one of the digistruct columns rumbled to life, spawning an armless Loader Bot. It trundled over to Jack, then keeled over, much to Jack's amusement.

"PLEASE. TAKE A LOAD OFF, SIR," the bot rumbled.

"Ppppppfthahaha! Aaaah, I love it!" Jack laughed, chucking himself back to sit in the hunk of metal. "Okay okay, let's talk strats—"

"Sir!"

Jack blanched. Angel blinked. The voice had been neither of theirs, and just like that, Jack wanted to kill the first person who walked into the room. He turned to look over his shoulder at the Hyperion employee standing in the doorway.

"…Yyyyyellow?" he cooed over, arching an eyebrow. "Alright so, what part of no one goes into the Central Control System but me did you not understand?"

Of course, it was Moorin. It was always Moorin interfering. The stupid, whey-faced, noodle-armed weirdo was standing in the doorway, gawking from Angel to Jack, presumably because a person with wings and a person in a mask was just too much to comprehend in one sitting.

"S-sir? I thought…I thought your contract had been terminated?" Moorin stammered, suddenly looking a lot less confident about his decision to open the door to the Control Core. Jack screwed his face up and waved a hand to dismiss his nonsense.

"Uh, temporary. Give it a day. Why are you down here, pudding-face? Give yourself a moment, 'cause it needs to be a real good excuse. I mean like, star-studded," Jack half-purred, rising to his feet and starting to walk over to the quivering employee. He all but wilted by the time Jack had reached him.

"Uhm, sir? We've lost at least a dozen staff to the Angel's malfunctions. We need to shut her down!"

Jack rolled his eyes, and pulled his pocket watch from his jacket. He inspected it with an air of boredom as Moorin stammered his demands, breathing on the metal and rubbing it with his sleeve to polish it a little. Moorin wattled on:

"—your wife suggested as much before her disappear—"

With a snap of his wrist, the watch's chain snaked around Moorin's throat. Jack pounced, knocking the smaller man to the ground and kneeling into his chest. He yanked the chain up tight, jaw clenching with the effort as Moorin writhed and squirmed.

"Rrrgh! Jimmy! Please make a note: I'm strangling Mister Moorin for bringing up my wife," Jack called over to his new-found assistant. Mister Blake's polished brown shoes crept into Jack's peripheral, and his slicken tone echoed back to him:

"Choked…Mister Moorin…"

Jack would have throttled Mister Blake then too if it hadn't been for the fact Moorin was still wiggling around.

"No, no, Jimmy, choking is something you do when you eat too fast," Jack snarled, disappointed at Mister Blake's apparent lack of education. "As I'm crushing Mister Moorin's windpipe with my watch chain, what I'm doing is actually referred to as strangling."

Beneath him, Moorin's fight was starting to fade along with the light in his eyes. He clawed feebly up Jack's arm, lips trembling.

"Gahk! P-please, please…"

Jack shook his head, lips pursing as he tutted at the other man.

"Shhh…there we go…" Jack cooed, watching with glee as Moorin stopped moving, his arm dropping lifelessly from Jack's arm to the ground. With a satisfied sigh, Jack stood up. He clipped his watch back in place, then straightened the cuffs on his jacket. "Anything else on today's agenda, Jimmy?"

Clearly, Mister Blake didn't like being scolded, as he replied with a little more sass than Jack would've liked to hear:

"It's Jeffrey, sir. And no."

"Thanks Jimmy!" The man grinned, looking down at Moorin again. God, his face was irritating even when he was dead. Jack couldn't help but give it a kick for good measure: "Rrgh! Well, then! Drinks are on Handsome Jack!"

"But sir, what about the malfunctions?" Mister Blake asked, one brow arching. "I'm afraid Mister Moorin was correct. While you were on Elpis, another malfunction did occur. No one really knew how to fix the issue and, well…yes."

Jack rolled his eyes and yanked the ECHO-device from his pocket. He was a busy man, and yet, literally no one else could be trusted to do anything around here.

He swiped up a new contact in his ECHO-device, (one he didn't even remember typing in, in all honesty). A voice answered before the ringing tone had even began.

"YES? JACK?! Oh, oh, how can I help? Is the mask serving?" Nakayama's overly excited voice erupted with such fervor that Jack had to hold the ECHO communicator away from his face.

"Yeah yeah, down boy," Jack drawled, moving over to the main console of the Control Core Angel. "Listen, you know how to code, right? You did the whole diet-soda immortality thing, digital me? Dumpy little robot with a creepy head projection?"

"Oh! You remembered! You remember my little project, how thoughtful Jack!"

"Oh my god, right, shut up and listen. I'm gonna give you limited access to a very important project of mine. Only 'cause I know if you mess it up, you'll probably kill yourself and save me the hassle, right?"

"U-uhm…a p-p-p-ersonal…project of…y-y-yours?"

"Stay conscious, idiot. I'm plugging in now…tell me when it's on your screen," Jack said, linking up his ECHO-device to the console. After a few moments and the sounds of tapping keys over the line, Nakayama piped up again.

"Oh…my…look at this! It's beautiful! It's incredible! Oh my…god, is that a perfect digital replica of you in the deleted files? Oh, I could recover this for my AI project and…"

"Nick-Nak? You're verbalizing everything you're thinking," Jack interjected, though he was curious by the existence of a digital copy of himself in the Control Core's programming. He glanced over to Angel, who was suddenly very interested in her own feet.

"Sorry sir. Y-yes, I can see a few problems with the code, looks like it's been overwritten, partly by…something. I will fix it up for you in a heartbeat!"

"Good man! Jimmy, keep an eye, and unplug that when he's done. His access is revoked the moment everything running again," Jack commanded. He gave Angel a wave goodbye, then made his way back to the Fast Travel network.

Jimmy was new to the job, so he would forgive him for missing one thing off the agenda for today.

Tassiter's office was such a waste of space, Jack thought to himself as he strode through it. He didn't bother to pay much attention to Tassiter's ranting demands, something along the lines of how did you get in here and why haven't the security bots thrown your hideous self out into space yet?

"—trying to blackmail me for my shares?"

Jack turned his attention to Tassiter then, catching the end of his rant as he did so. It was weird. Before going into the Vault, Tassiter had seemed so much more imposing. Jack could have sworn the dude had shrunk since coming back from the moon. He definitely gave much less of a shit what he said anymore. That was pretty exhilarating.

"Now now, Mister Tassiter, blackmail is such a dirty little word, isn't it?" Jack pouted, walking up the steps to Tassiter's desk. Then he shrugged and changed his tune. "Actually, you know what, come to think of it, it's not a dirty word at all. It's kind of awesome. Blackmail! Say it with me: bllllaaaaaack…"

"Oh, go to hell, John!" Tassiter snapped, inching away from Jack as he prowled around the desk to stand behind it with the company president. "Just because you got lucky with your Pandora hunch doesn't mean—"

Jack blinked. Wow, he was really still mad about the Eridium-mining call? That was ages ago. Talk about holding a grudge. Tassiter had made an idiot out of himself on that one, Jack really couldn't take the credit.

"Because I was right, is what you mean," Jack pointed out with a smirk before a frown descended on his face. "And call me Jack, idiot."

How many times did he have to correct this jumped-up shitstain excuse for a human being?

"You may have been able to scare the other directors into giving up their shares, but I know you," Tassiter tried to retort, though Jack could see the fear dancing across his face in ugly ripples. "I know beneath that ridiculous mask, you're still a hideous, pathetic little nobody."

Jack unclipped his watch. Good investment piece, this. He was really getting some mileage out of it.

"Mister Tassiter. Maybe you can settle up something for me," Jack offered, taking a step closer to the man. "Do you know the difference between choking and strangulation?"

Tassiter's stupid face looked all the stupider for the confusion that twisted it up. It pissed Jack off to no end — why did no one know the difference? Just how uneducated were the people in this place? Jack hadn't even been to school and he knew this stuff!

Jack clipped his watch back in place. He decided this very much was personal.

"What—"

Tassiter was old news to Jack before his hands had even clamped around his scrawny neck. The two men crashed to the floor, Jack squeezing the life from his boss' throat, watching as his smug face shattered into a hideous blotching of purple and red. Jack's knuckled whitened, his fingers tightening, feeling Tassiter's windpipe collapse under his vice grip.

"Mister Tassiter?" A voice crackled over the soon-to-be-late CEO's desk communicator. "Mister Tassiter, are you there?"

With one last squeeze of his neck, Mister Tassiter was definitely not longer there. Jack dropped the man, wiping his hands on his jacket as though he had touched something disgusting.

"Mister Tassiter's been replaced, sweetcheeks," Jack replied, straightening out his hair and readjusting the ring on his finger. "Starting today, you're working for me."

"W-who is…John? Is that you?"

Jack had half a mind to smash the communicator then. For over twenty years he had slaved away at Hyperion. The least they could do is remember his frigging name.

"Call me Jack, honey," Jack replied as calmly as he could, reminding himself the woman was probably as dumb as her former boss was at least. He cast a look down at Tassiter's corpse, allowing himself a moment to enjoy the fact he would never have to hear his snivelling tone calling him a hideous little code monkeyever again. "Handsome Jack."